Conventionally, in production facilities for semiconductor devices and so on, works such as a semiconductor substrate and articles such as a transport container containing works may be sequentially transported between multiple processing units while being held by overhead carriages (transport devices) that travel along a traveling rail provided near the ceiling of a facility. Furthermore, multiple articles may be simultaneously transported by a single overhead carriage.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-362737 discloses a mask transport device including a trolley that is movably connected to a track rail provided for transporting a pattern transfer mask to a mask storage device and a substrate processing device, is movable along the track rail, and is substantially horizontally rotatable about a portion connected to the track rail, and holding members that are provided on the trolley so as to hold a plurality of mask storage containers that accommodate pattern transfer masks.
In the transport device of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-362737, the multiple holding members for holding the mask storage containers (articles) are provided on the trolley. The multiple mask storage containers held by the holding members are simultaneously transported.
In the transport device of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-362737, however, the trolley needs the two or more holding members in order to simultaneously transport the multiple transport containers (articles). Moreover, a drive unit has to be provided for driving all the holding members. Thus, the transport device has a complicated device structure.
An object of the present invention is to provide a transport device that can simultaneously transport multiple articles with a simple device configuration.